Yeah, whatever, is what I kept thinking — but fuck me dead if there are some Democrats who keep repeating “keep the  government running and we can talk about repealing the medical device tax later.” Now, that is stupid.

It’s really just a great example of the false debate about taxes. No, the medical device tax should not be repealed, as Citizens for Tax Justice coherently argues:

One argument made by the industry against the medical device excise tax is that it singles them out for higher taxes. The reality, however, is that the excise tax was passed as one of many levies on various healthcare sectors to help pay for health insurance expansion.

More vaguely, the industry has argued that the medical device excise tax will threaten “medical innovation and Americans jobs.” On its face, this charge is ridiculous considering that healthcare reform will increase demand for devices overall, and that the excise rate on the device is a mere 2.3 percent. That low tax rate should be a drop in the bucket to a medical device company like Medtronic, which had a profit margin of over 20 percent last year. In addition, the excise tax applies to medical devices imported to the US, and does not apply to devices made in the US if they are exported, meaning that the legislation was designed to protect competitiveness and job creation at US medical device companies.

The one critical thing that the medical device tax does accomplish is to raise crucially needed revenue. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the measure will raise about $30 billion over the next ten years. Given that the tax cuts passed earlier this year are already set to double the projected long term national debt, it does not make sense to exacerbate the debt further by passing billions more in tax cuts for an already lucrative industry.

Actually, worth pointing this out: Obamacare is a massive subsidy to the private health care industry. It should pay more in taxes, not less.